Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
(OP)
I have my first career.. I was told it would consist of engineer tasks but I haven't done anything engineer related yet. I am pretty much a cad zombie drafting telecom towers all day. I am however paid like an engineer, if I put some overtime every week I am scheduled to earn over 65k. Should I be content? Or look for some real engineer work even if it means ill make 10k less?





RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Good luck,
Latexman
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Money isn't everything ... but it sure helps pay the bills.
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
If you haven't been there that long, you might still be in the entry level stages. Sorry...until you have more experience then you aren't really all that valuable as a decision maker. You might just be being brought up to speed and given some menial tasks until you learn the ropes and can understand more about the profession. Maybe you need to learn the basics before they are going to have you start meeting clients and making decisions.
Don't know...just my take. I just know I got pretty bent out of shape when I was early in my career because I wasn't getting responsibility...but I look back now and realize that I couldn't have handled it if I had been given it until I had gained some time just being in the game.
Your salary is pretty nice to have you just sitting there doing drafting...are you sure you aren't in line for something else in the near future?
That being said, whether you are religious or not, the parable from Luke in the New Testament is a good one in this situation and the quote that pertains is "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much". Do your best at the job you are given and when you do more (better) opportunities will open up.
PE, SE
Eastern United States
"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
And since you can count your current job as experience, ther's no reason to have to take a job at $55k. There's jobs out there for new grads that pay $65k, and more if you have some experience. Just be honst, that you're been doing CAD, you've learned drawing layout and picked up a few things, but now you want to do your own designs.
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Chris
SolidWorks 11
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Or as Confucious say - "patience Grasshopper"...
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Really? Without knowing anything about you? And if everyone says you should be content, you will be? That hasn't worked for anyone else in the entire history of the human race. I don't know how good these guy's control of the Force is, but it's highly unlikely that it would make much difference. The bottom line is that you ARE NOT content, and no matter what anyone says or does, that's not going to change much.
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
You can either:
1) Make some money, get some experience (1~2 years), and slide on to another job before you get pigeon holed.
2) Ask for more responsibility, take it on without asking for more money (you just got there, remember that) and get some meat on the resume so you can pick your targets a bit on the next job hunt.
3) Take initiative as stated in 2, impress the suits, and try to move up.
There's a lot of b*tch work on the ladder to becoming a PE (You're not an engineer if you don't have a stamp - especially civil/structural), if you don't like doing CAD work and basic calculations, get a masters degree.
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Good luck,
Latexman
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
PE, SE
Eastern United States
"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Hmm, either the non exempt world really is different or you need to just suck it up and get some time under your belt.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Good luck,
Latexman
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Walking around the entire factory site counting trailers (we didn't know how many we had)
Collating absenteeism from the assembly lines into a weekly report for managers
Manning the wages counter after yet another stuff up (all hands on deck)
Photocopying engineer's reports for them
and yes Virginia, those did count towards my experience as an engineer.
So I think actually designing stuff as an entry level job is pretty damn cool in comparison.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
The fact that you are bored and appear bored may well factor into someone giving a plum engineering assignment to someone else.
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
"Work" is not like "school", where you have definitive, short term activities with conclusive results. "Work" is more long term marathon-type stuff, vague, frustrating, and you learn to live for & seek out the thrill tasks. And develop hobbies and circles of friends in order to have a creative outlet and maintain your sanity.
Learn what you can, master it if possible. Make you desires known to the managers (politely, diplomatically, non-threateningly....they rarely teach that in school). If the tasks you are learning to master now, and the perceived future direction with you are presented, don't align with your "career goals" (if you have any at all), then do what you can and work to move on. It is absolutely imperative that you maintain a positive image of your character for folks to remember after you depart. Part of the graduation process is to explore and determine what it is that will get you up early in the morning. If you find that, you stop working for a living and start playing for a living. And it's damn sweet if God allows you that Grace and lets it happen to you. Let me tell you: it's a glorious day when that happens.
Then life tends to happen to you, spouses, deaths, other life changing events, & your priorities change. Then all you want is some job security and to go home at the end of the day, sit in the Lazy-Boy, drink a beer, and yell at the TV.
TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering
www.bluetechnik.com
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Will it go this way for you? Who can tell. Still, it is up to you to manage your career direction. No one else will.
Meanwhile, two months is nothing in work terms, barely long enough to hold your breath. Practice patience, STFU, watch, and LEARN.
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Unless you work in R&D or work for a large enough company where you can specialize in something, say structural engineering, your days can largely be filled with tasks that are mind-numbingly dull, puncutuated by some occasional real engineering.
I personally don't see job hopping as a bad thing, especially early in your career. I look at those who look down on job hopping as being old fashioned. But with that being said, having a few jobs that you only worked a few months at probably is pusihing it to the extreme. Even if you hate your current job, I would stick it out for at least a year. Get some experience under your belt and see if things improve. If the handwriting is on the wall, then it is time to jump ship. Changing jobs gives you an opportunity to experience different things. I have been at both extremes from my first internship where the engineering department consisted of my boss and myself, to mega-corporations where I was one of hundreds, if not thousands of engineers. I hated the extremes and discovered that I was happy at medium sized companies where I had the opportunity to be a big fish in a little pond, but at the same time there was interesting work, opportunity to specialize, and room for advancement.
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
R. J. Mitchell of Spitfire fame.
Sydney Camm of Hurricane, Hunter & Harrier fame.
Henry Folland responsible for the Gladiator & Gnat amongst others.
Geoffrey de Havilland Mosquito etc.
Now you can argue it was a different industry in different time & place etc. but still. If starting 'on the board' was good enough for them then I'm hesitant to suggest most of us are too good for it.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Doing what you love is important but so is showing some kind of reliability for a time period to a company. No one wants to hire someone who they are worried is going to get bored in 3 months and quit. It's not worth the cost to train them.
My opinion is to stick it out and learn to draft. It's not the worst skill to have in any engineering field. When a good opportunity does present itself, go for it, but don't run away after 2 months because it's not fun or you will be changing jobs every 2 months for a long time.
If it was fun all the time, they wouldn't call it work!
PE, SE
Eastern United States
"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
There are other degree choices too.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
I have been doing CAD work off and on for 20 years. I guess I must hate myself. Now I find myself going to another trainging class for CAD, this is so funny. I think you need a hobby, so that you don't whine so much at this job. When you stop hating that job, they might look at you as reliable and send you out to what your drawing. Maybe you should look at what your drawing and figure out how they arrived at this design?
Stick with it, get a hobby, quit whinning, do more when they ask you. How many times has this question been asked here?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
When I got my first proper position (or job title) after University my first 5 months were spent on hopping between CAD and just sitting in the library, reading all the various standards relating to the department I worked in. After becoming a semi-competent CAD jockey I was then moved from the Structures Dept. into the Marine Engineering Department and guess what i did there for another 5 months?
Just when I thought Engineer was just a posh term for Draftsman, I was given my first place with a design team and it was horrible. I was still calculating like a student and that is just not good enough for the work place.
Six years on and now I'm in charge of my own designs but most of that is drawing whatever it is I've just run the numbers for.
TL;DR
Be patient and try to do the best you can with whatever it is you're given to do and soon, you're attention to detail will be noticed and you'll go further up the ladder. If you start job hopping you'll only ever be sliding down the snakes. [/waffle]
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Too many. I sometimes wonder when we all got to be too good to do some drafting at least 'on our way up' like many greats of the past.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
The guy in charge of the CMT department (not my boss) figured he could get a good profit out of me by billing the client for 80 hours and paying me salary for 40. I was making the same amount as an hourly worker making $8 an hour.
After a couple of months my boss reeled it back in and I spent more hours in the office and cut back my hours. The time I spent doing the field work was invaluable towards my experience as an engineer. If you don't pay your dues you'll be less of an engineer.
As most posters have said, two months is nothing. I would not leave a job without serving at least one year unless there were some egregious circumstances.
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Make the most of your time and experience on the drafting. Keep track of the time in man-hours it takes you to start with a blank sheet (or screen) and end up with a professionally endorsed drawing, including back-drafting and recycle. Soon you will start being asked for man-hour estimates, you will start being asked to coordinate the efforts of several CADD folks, maybe checking the work done by peers...
The "engineering" that you aspire to is coming, trust me. Oddly enough, I have been in the engineering business for 30 years, 29 of which for an EPC contractor, and one of the two things I regret never having learned is CADD. (The other is HYSYS.). If I could CADD my own work I would have it made right now.
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
When I had people working for me I would hand them a job , get out of the way and see how they handled it.
If they did ok I would give them a more involved task. I was looking for confidence and competance.
The thing I was also looking for was attitude, if I got griping, moaning, comments of this isn't my job etc.,
That person did not last long.
B.E.
The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
I do think EIT's should be CAD jockies for awhile to learn how things go together and how a set of drawings is produced. If you've only been at it for 2-months, I think it's unreasonable for you to be noncontent.
RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?